Slave to the Download Manager

At the end of each month, my buoyant marauding around eMusic begins. It's the 27th, in fact. The day my account reloads; the first day marking the inquisition. It's do or die.

"Where do I look first?" I ask myself, fingers slightly curved over my blue and grey mouse, sweeping each corner of my mismatched but suitably green mouse pad. My first stop: Rock/Pop. I just have to see what it could possibly be hiding. Much to my chagrin, The Gaslight Anthem's The '59 Sound appears on the main page. "No," I say to myself. This kind of music is cold - it makes me feel cold! It's like getting lost in the aisles of a Borders. The faint smell of Seattle coffee signaling me to run before it's too late. But it's not all bad on Rock/Pop street. Some '80s, British Invasion, prog rock, new-wave and synthpop. Okay. I can exhale safely. I move on with a few, new downloads in my eMusic desktop folder. I need some electronica, though. The type of electronica with synths the sonic equivalent of fireworks - flourishing higher, becoming denser, richer as other sounds explode into it and on top of it - then coming down playfully, leaving only small fragments of its existence. On my way, I stop off at Industrial. I love industrial, but I'm fastidious about the genre. I take a listen to Project Pitchfork's Chakra Red, and am amazed by the music. My only trouble lies in the vocals. The devilishly deep, almost unnecessarily robotic vocals really do make me giggle. It just sounds ridiculous. I download the beautiful "Human Crossing," the album's first track. I can always just mentally expunge the hideous vocals.

Don't get me wrong. eMusic can get you lost in its veritable deluge of music. For the most part, it strays from the de rigueur nicely.

So, what have I been listening to these past six months? Well.

New stuff:

THE CATHERINE WHEEL
THE DURUTTI COLUMN (Vini Reilly...yeahhh)
Deastro
Liam Finn
Lonely London Lad
Project Pitchfork
The High Violets
Tosca
Friendly Fires
Burial
Glasvegas
Caged Baby
Chapterhouse
Culture Kultur
Datarock
Gene Loves Jezebel
Glass Candy
Joakim
Lykke Li
Mahogany
Neon Neon
Oszibarack
Repeater
Sebastien Tellier
Spacemen 3
Tycho
The Parallelograms
The House of Love

there are a lot more, but you get the point. Oh, and, embarrassingly enough, THE DANDY WARHOLS. Oh god.

Of course, there are also a bunch of artists for whom my obsession has only grown deeper - those I won't list. Too many to mention. Let me just say that they lie in the acid house/brit rock/electronic (dance)/Madchester/alternative/shoegaze/blah blah region.



P.S. LADY GAGA SUCKS.